Suhit Gupta
03-29-2006, 04:00 PM
<div class='os_post_top_link'><a href='http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20060327-6466.html' target='_blank'>http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20060327-6466.html</a><br /><br /></div><i>"A study done by Bridge Data suggests what many of us already suspected: Podcasting is popular, but it has little to do with the "pods," that is, the iPods and other portable players for which "Podcasting" was supposedly born. The study concluded that 80 percent of podcasts are either listened to and/or watched on a PC, or simply deleted. For some, this begs the question: what is a podcast? TDG Research is apparently puzzled by this quandary: isn't a podcast, by definition, supposed to be played on a portable device? I have another question: is this really a dilemma? "Push" content is nothing new, and podcasts are fine examples of push content. Regardless of where a podcast is played, the mechanism for delivery has become the essence of podcasting. Automatic updating/delivery, usually fueled by either RSS or some helper application such as iTunes, is what drives it."</i><br /><br />Completely unsurprising. In fact, I would have been <i>shocked</i> if podcasts were primarily played or listed to on an iPod. Ok, so be honest, how many of you haven't tried to watch or listen to a podcast simply because you don't have an iPod? :) Either way, what I was more surprised to hear is that the projection is only about 9 million people will listen to podcasts this year. This is a much smaller audience than I would have figured, espcially given how many Podcasters are exist.